Our meetings

 

The RSA – or the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce, to give it its full name, was founded in 1754 by William Shipley, who believed in enriching social progress through the creativity of ideas.

Today the RSA has a mission to enrich society through ideas and action, creating conditions for enlightened thinking and collaborative action, to help to address modern social challenges.

There are around 27,000 fellows, with a growing overseas presence (currently more than 2,000 fellows in over 80 countries worldwide) and we have recently started to hold meetings in Laos.

 

The current plan is to hold these meetings quarterly, with a series of conversations led by one of the many amazing people who spend time here, and who have agreed to lead one of our evenings guiding us with their specialist knowledge.

There is a wealth of such knowledge here, from people with a global background in research, the UN, diplomats, NGO workers, educators, finance, and UXO experts, to name but a few. Many of these people stay for many years, others for just a short while, and the hope is to take the opportunity to have interesting people with extensive knowledge of a subject, lead a discussion amongst engaged and intellectually curious guests, with the intention of creating further Fellows of the RSA.  

 

As we move forward, we hope to also have ‘ad hoc’ evenings whereby someone here for just a short time can also lead a discussion. We also plan to have evenings focused on ways in which we can pull together some of our skills, maybe allowing us to achieve something amazing.

These various different evenings will focus on Lao issues, on issues related to the region, but also of worldwide interest, in line with the RSA's world vision.